Guest Post: Why A Finite World Is A Problem

1. A finite world is a problem because we and all of the other creatures living in this world share the same piece of “real estate.” If humans use increasingly more resources, other species necessarily use less. Even “renewable” resources are shared with other species. If humans use more, other species must use less. Solar panels covering the desert floor interfere with normal wildlife; the use of plants for biofuels means less area is available for planting food and for vegetation preferred by desirable insects, such as bees.

2. A finite world is governed by cycles. We like to project in straight lines or as constant percentage increases, but the real world doesn’t follow such patterns. Each day has 24 hours. Water moves in waves. Humans are born, mature, and die. A resource is extracted from an area, and the area suddenly becomes much poorer once the income from those exports is removed. Once a country becomes poorer, fighting is likely to break out. A recent example of this is Egypt’s loss of oil exports, about the time of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 (Figure 1). The fighting has not yet stopped.

Figure 1. Egypt’s oil production and consumption, based on BP’s 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy data.

The interconnectedness of resources with the way economies work, and the problems that occur when those resources are not present, make the future much less predictable than most models would suggest.

3. A finite world means that we eventually run short of easy-to-extract resources of many types, including fossil fuels, uranium, and metals. This doesn’t mean that we will “run out” of these resources. Instead, it means that the extraction process will become more expensive for these fuels and metals, unless technology somehow acts to hold costs down. If extraction costs rise, anything made using these fuels and metals becomes more expensive, assuming businesses selling these products are able to recover their costs. (If they don’t, they go out of business, quickly!) Figure 2 shows that a recent turning point toward higher costs came in 2002, for both energy products and base metals.

4. A finite world means that globalization will prove to be a major problem, because it added proportionately far more humans to world demand than it added undeveloped resources to world supply. China was added to the World Trade Organization in December 2001. Its use of fuels of all types skyrocketed quickly soon afterward (Figure 3, below). As noted in Item 3 above, the turning point for prices of fuels and metals was in 2002. In my view, this was not a coincidence–it was connected with rising demand from China, as well as the fact that we had extracted a considerable share of the cheap to extract fuels earlier.

Figure 3. Energy consumption by source for China based on BP 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy.

5. In a finite world, wages don’t rise as much as fuel and metal extraction costs rise, because the extra extraction costs add no real benefit to society–they simply remove resources that could have been put to work elsewhere in the economy. We are, in effect, becoming less and less efficient at producing energy products and metals. This happens because we are producing fuels that are located in harder to reach places and that have more pollutants mixed in. Metal ores have similar problems–they are deeper and of lower concentration. All of the extra human effort and extra resource expenditure does not produce more end product. Instead, we are left with less human effort and less resources to invest in the rest of the economy. As a result, total production of goods and services for the economy tends to stagnate.

In such an economy, workers find that their inflation-adjusted wages tend to lag. (This happens because the total economy produces less, so each worker’s share of what is produced is less.) Companies producing energy and metal products are also likely to find it harder to make a profit, because with lagging wages, consumers cannot afford to buy very much product at the higher prices. In fact, there is likely to be the danger of an abrupt drop in production, because prices remain too low to justify the high cost of additional investment.

6. When workers can afford less and less (see Item 5 above), we end up with multiple problems:

a. If workers can afford less, they cut back in discretionary spending. This tends to slow or eventually stop economic growth. Lack of economic growth eventually affects stock market prices, since stock prices assume that sale of their products will continue to grow indefinitely.

b. If workers can afford less, one item that is increasingly out of reach is a more expensive home. As result, housing prices tend to stagnate or fall with stagnating wages and rising fuel and metals prices. The government can somewhat fix the problem through low interest rates and more commercial sales–that is why the problem is mostly gone now.

c. If workers find their wages lagging, and some are laid off, they increasingly fall back on government services. This leaves governments with a need to pay out more in benefits, without being able to collect sufficient taxes. Thus, governments ultimately end up with financial problems, if extraction costs for fuels and metals rise faster than can be offset by innovation, as they have been since 2002.

7. A finite world means that the need for debt keeps increasing, at the same time the ability to repay debt starts to fall. Workers find that goods, such as cars, are increasingly out of their ability to pay for them, because car prices are affected by the rising cost of metals and fuels. As a result, debt levels need to rise to buy these cars. Governments find that they need more debt to pay for all of the services promised to increasingly impoverished workers. Even energy companies find a need for more debt. For example, according to today’s Wall Street Journal,

Last year, 80 big energy companies in North America spent a combined $50.6 billion more than they brought in from their operations, according to data from S&P Capital IQ. That deficit was twice as high as in 2011, and four times as high as in 2010.

At the same time that the need for debt is increasing, the ability to pay it back is falling. Discretionary income of workers is lagging, because of today’s high prices of fuels and metals. Governments find it difficult to raise taxes. Fuel and metal companies find it hard to raise prices enough to finance operations out of cash flow. Ultimately, (which may not be too in the future) this situation has to come to an unhappy end.

Figure 4. Repaying loans is easy in a growing economy, but much more difficult in a shrinking economy.

Governments can cover up this problem for a while, with super low interest rates. But if interest rates ever rise again, the increase in interest rates is likely to lead to huge debt defaults, and major financial failures internationally. This happens because higher interest rates lead to a need for higher taxes, and because higher interest rates mean purchases such as homes, cars, and new factories become less affordable. Rising interest rates also mean that the selling price of existing bonds falls, potentially creating financial problems for banks and insurance companies.

8. The fact that the world is finite means that economic growth will need to slow and eventually stop. We are already seeing slower economic growth in the parts of the world that have seen a drop in oil consumption (European Union, the United States, and Japan), even as the rest of the world has seen rising oil consumption.

Figure 5. Oil consumption based on BP’s 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy.

Countries that have had particularly steep drops in oil consumption, such as Greece (Figure 6 below), have had particularly steep drops in their economic growth, while countries with rapid increases in oil and other energy consumption, such as China shown in Figure 2 above, have shown rapid economic growth.

Figure 6. Oil consumption of Greece, Based on EIA data.

The reason why we are already reaching difficulties with oil consumption is because for oil, we are reaching limits of a finite world. We have already pulled out most of the easy to extract oil, and what is left is more expensive and slow to extract. World oil production is not rising very fast in total, and the price needs to be high to cover the high cost of extraction. Someone has to be left out. The countries that use a large proportion of oil in their energy mix (like Greece, with its tourist trade) find that the products they produce are too expensive in a world marketplace. Countries that use mostly coal (which is cheaper), such as China, have a huge cost advantage in a cost-competitive world.

9. The fact that the world is finite has been omitted from virtually every model predicting the future. This means that economic models are virtually all wrong. The models generally predict that economic growth will continue indefinitely, but this is not really possible in a finite world. The models don’t even consider the fact that economic growth will scale back in mature economies.

Even climate change models include far too much future fossil fuel use, in both their standard runs and in their “peak oil” scenarios. This is convenient for regulators. Oil limits are scary because they indicate a possible near-term problem. If a climate change model indicates a need to cut back on future fossil fuel use, these models give the regulator a more distant problem to talk about instead.

10. Even the most basic economic relationships tend to be mis-estimated in a finite world. It is common for economists to look at relationships that worked in the past, and assume that similar relationships will work now. For example, researchers like to look at how much debt an economy can afford relative to GDP, or how much debt a business can afford. The problem is that the amount of debt an economy or a business can afford shrinks dramatically, as the economic growth rates shrinks, unless the interest rate is extremely low.

As another example, economists believe that higher prices will lead to substitutes or a reduction in demand. Unfortunately, they have never stopped to consider that the reduction in demand for an energy product might have a serious adverse impact on the economy–for example, it could mean many fewer jobs are available. Fewer jobs mean less demand (or affordability), but is that what is really desired?

Economists also seem to believe that prices for oil products will keep rising, until they eventually reach the price level of substitutes. If people are poorer, this is not necessarily the case, as discussed above.

11. Besides energy products and metals, there are many other limits that are a problem in a finite world. There is already an inadequate supply of fresh water in many parts of the world. This problem can be solved with desalination, but doing so is expensive and takes resources away from other uses.

Arable land in a finite world is subject to limits. Soil is subject to erosion and degrades in quality if it is mistreated. Food is dependent on oil, water, arable land, and soil quality, so it quickly reaches limits if any of these inputs are disturbed. Pollinating insects, such as bees, are also important.

Probably the biggest problem in a finite world is the problem of too high population. Before fossil fuel use was added, the world could feed only 1 billion people. It is not clear that even that many could be fed today, without fossil fuels. The world’s population now exceeds 7 billion.

Where We Are Now in a Finite World

At this point, the problem of hitting limits in a finite world has morphed into primarily a financial problem. Governments are particularly affected. They find that they need to borrow increasing amounts of money to provide promised services to their citizens. Debt is a huge problem, both for governments and for individual citizens. Interest rates need to stay very low, in order for the current system to “stick together.”

Governments are either unaware of the true nature of their problems, or are doing everything they can to hide the true situation from their constituents. Governments rely on economists for advice on what to do next. Economists’ models do a very poor job of representing today’s world, so they provide little useful guidance.

The primary way of dealing with limits seems to be “solutions” dictated by concern over climate change. These solutions are of questionable benefit when it comes to the real limits of a finite world, but they do make it look like politicians are doing something useful. They also provide a continuing revenue stream to academic institutions and “green” businesses.

The public has been placated by all kinds of misleading stories about how oil from shale will be the solution. Quantitative Easing (used by governments to lower interest rates) has temporarily allowed stock markets to soar, and allowed interest rates to stay quite low. So superficially, everything looks great. The question is how long all of this will last. Will interest rates rise, and undo the happy situation? Or will a different financial problem (for example, a debt problem in Europe or Japan) bring the house of cards down? Or will the ultimate problem be a decline in oil supply, perhaps caused by oil and gas companies reaching debt limits?

2014 will be an interesting year. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed as to how things will work out. It is surreal how close we can be to limits, without major media catching on to what the problem really is.

This piece was great and so easy to understand a caveman can do it, bravo.

Now, what about Woar? Can't Woar make the chart showing how much oil the US uses and how much the rest of the world uses mean revert? And can we get a reference to the Georgia Guide(to the future)stones?

The finite planet meme should just be common sense. If a human burns wood, for fire, and the trees start getting further and further away sooner or later even the dumbest human should be able to work out why.

We all know, finite means finite!

But, yes, our desires are infinite and finite is awkward.

Luckily there is a solution! (Even though you, me and everyone knows damned well there is not!!)

If I could fix this problem and it wouldn't cost that much, (all I want is a banker's salary) and...........your vote and then I will make all these finite "problems" go away, would you do it, there's even a iPhone in it for yer. The "solution" is distraction, er sorry....economic growth. And we will measure economic growth with....GDP and we can increase GDP with "added value" and we don't even need real money any more. We can have all the energy we need supplied by nuclear and advancing technology means we can have growth by recycling most of our resources with "Total Factor Productivity" and to make sure we use what resources we have left sensibly, we will put ownership of them in the hands of a small number of people (an elegant solution for control purposes only, of course,) and then strictly regulate their release by committee etc......doesn't that sound like a great plan? Sarc off

Humans are a self-regulating process like all other species. But due to our relative success at managing our destiny, i.e. engineering our own inevitable and quite routine dissolution (forgive me, I've seen far too many fossils in the rocks to take humans seriously as a special-case), we have made the very cute and innocent noobish mistake of assuming it'll be us who does the regulating.

BZZZZZZZZTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most of the consternation and ideological thrashing that goes on around this topic is purely due to the ego's failure to come to terms with our total lack of any effective steering-role within the actual self-regulation mechanism.

No, Element. He is NOT Pure Energy. He is made of Matter and exists in the Temporal Realm, as you. It is Mass that is Energy and Mass is just one property of Matter. Dimension is another property as Matter depends upon Geometry in order to define it as such. (Most Matter is vaccuous with concentrations of elementary Energy/Mass Fields)

It takes a transmutation of Mass with a concurrent loss of Dimensionality for the transformation of Matter into Pure Energy which is Light.

Currently we do this as we smash Atoms in Particle Accelerators. We are also pretty good at using Fission Reactors*** in order to transmute Matter into Energy. Of course an Nuclear Bomb is just a reactor in an Extreme Geometry.

***Fukushima Daiachi is just an example of how "good" that we are. It is uncontrolled but transmutating Mass into Energy effectively.

Way too optimistic unless aliens come and get us. Seeing how we can't even get shit straight here after being here for umpteen years forget it. One things for sure if there was a capsule of some sort any alien race would be wise to destroy it before ever opening it.

The Universe is an adiabat and is finite. It had a beginning and will perish due to Entropy.

Furthermore we are at the Oldest Point in the known Universe. When you peer into the depths of space you are seeing what was and not what is, or, will be.

An image of a distant star is the evidence that a star existed at that position so many Years ago. The closest star, Proxima Centauri, is 3.2 Light Yers distant. It took 3.2 Years for the Light to arrive. Proxima Centauri has MOVED during that time. It is no longer where it appears to be.

Stars which are more distant have moved in the time that it takes the light to reach us.

As for Galaxies...M-31, The Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large Galaxy is 100 Million Light Years distant. It has moved much closer to the Milky Way as it appears as it is destined to collide with the Milky Way.

Astophysicists see images and NOT Objects. The images can be evidence of an Object's existence but can also be a reflection of another image.

The Universe is like a Carnival House of Mirrors. It is like a Kalideoscope. Most of it is illusion, distorted by the lenses of Dark Matter and Time.

But it does have a beginning and will have an end. Thus it is an adiabat, a limited, closed system.

you're not suggesting that the state will be the vehicle of interstellar exploration, are you?

back in the 60s space race, nasa recruited brilliant engineers from the private sector who knew what it meant to create, to innovate. and they acheived great results.

but over time they got absorbed into the behemoth of the state, their souls crushed, their innovation stifled.

what has nasa done since then except launch a few shuttles?

sadly, nasa has become a bureaucratic clusterfuck.

i am all for space travel, exploration, and research, absolutely 100%!

i just don't see the state as being the vehicle through which these dreams come to fruition - the state is an institution of violence and coercion, and they only thing they are good at is enriching the oligarchs, impoverishing the ordinary people, and crushing the human spirit underfoot.

if there is some hope for the frontier of space, it is in the private sector - the x prize, virgin galactic, felix baumgartner, etc. - the human spirit unfettered by the chains of state bondage will soar to the heavens!

"I'm just sayin that we might not have the political and economic willpower"

And I'm thinking that you don't have a clue about what this means, the realized impact.

If you take energy and resources to do something then that means it's not available for something else- "opportunity cost." Are you aware that shunting such resources has a cost in terms of LIVES? Yeah. But us "wealthier" folks have becom accustomed to being hidden from these realities.

Further, I don't think that you understand the real impacts of exponential growth. Educate yourself, look up Dr. Albert Bartlett's presentation Arithmetic, Population and Energy.

I just want to point out that it's impossible for something finite to contain something infinite.

Therefore, if humans are indeed infinitely stupid, this would by implication be binding evidence that the universe is indeed infinite.

It is a little surprising that Albert did not twig to the ramifications.

As with assuming light speed is a universal constant, we can't test this everywhere, so we must necessarily defer to a Universal Principle which states that always and everywhere human beings will be observed to be infinitely stupid creatures.

Thereby conforming to a workable approximation the under-laying nature and extent of our as unseen deep-cosmos. I suspect we will make great strides if we fully explore this principle's deeper physical implications, though I suppose the limiting factor, even within an unlimited space, will be that the infinite stupidity itself will necessarily frustrate our inquiries.

I think the author has not fully understood that inflation does not effect all commodities equally and can distort the economy by artificially changing [up/down] the prices in specific sectors dependent on who gets the [new] money first. A more correct--natural--distribution of savings would likely balance the use and production of energy, and all other commodities, in a more stable and sustainable way. We may live in cycles, but Ctrl+P magnifies crests and troughs.

Exactly. Since ancient times about 85% of the population were serfs/slaves of the land or to a master. There were some brief periods where some elements of this group saw some relative prosperity and ate well for a generation or two such as after the plagues that caused labor shortages. Our recent housing bubble created a horde or temporarily rich contractors buying boats, Mustang GTs and McMansions.

Correctamundo, Ned. Real (inflation adjusted) commodities prices have declined since 1793. That's ample time to discredit any theory. A graph illlustrating that fact shows that commodities prices are in a well defined 2-standard deviation channel. Prices rebounded from its top-line a couple of years ago when the last price cycle peaked. Plenty of room on the downside to accommodate ongoing "real" deflation. Why Tverberg and other neo-Malthusians cannot confront reality and call it like it is remains a mystery to me.

I down-arrowed you because logic. The earth is finite. Economic growth requires energy growth because economics must also conform to the laws of physics. The more goods and services that are created, the more energy is required to produce them, and everyone wants more GDP. That energy is primarily concentrated finite fossil fuel. The energy return on energy invested (EROI) for oil is dropping like a rock, meaning that it takes more and more energy just to get the stuff out of the ground. Low EROI also means low or no economic growth. 48 countries have now passed their peak rate of production (peak oil). The result is not just higher and higher oil prices, but higher and higher prices for everything which needs oil for its production or distribution, which is pretty much everything. This especially hurts if you're a net importer of oil, and you don't produce an equivalent surplus, but instead borrow lots of money (PIIGS, US, UK). In 6 of the last 7 years, the world has consumed more food than it has produced. When food prices go up because of increasing input costs and huge demand, what happens? Demand destruction isn't pretty when it involves food. Malthus was only wrong in his timing. Innovation can no longer defy physical limits.

Some say that this was all revealed to a man exiled to an island about 2,000 years ago. It is in the last chapter in the most widely read book on the planet. According to him, it all ends badly for humanity.

I think what rsnoble is saying is that this is the scam run by those with influence and that they'll toss a lot of people under the bus in order to push their schemes. And, sadly, a lot of people are readily duped and they throw themselves under the bus...

Sam, waay back when we were wet behind the ears here on ZH it seems like none of this was being talked about. I'd been harping about it from the get-go and now people are finally starting to get it! And this is really my only personal goal- if there's to be any real chance of eveolving we're going to have to figure out how to do it in a non-growth world (or, we just wipe each other out and start the same thing all over).

I am 65 and young enough to have a clear memory and old enough to remember america from mid last century. Debt is a problem, but not THE problem. THE problem is that the higher quality intellects, character, and work ethic of that earlier era is inconceivable to the 20 and 30 year olds of today that should be generating the new products and ideas. Political correctness put aside, successive generations of the dumbist, laziest, and least abel have multiplied far beyond the best best that america used to produce. My own memory tells me this. I see this long term trend continuing with a further decline of the average intellect, and work ethic. I do not want this to be so, but it is what I see.

Thought provoking comment you have there. I don't want to use too broad a brush, but it seems to me that the dumbing down of society at large has been a result of entitlement programs born on the backs of other people and future generations. If .gov was unable to use debt to pacify its subjects, there would be no entitlement systems as we know them today, and folks would be forced to smarten up and fend for themselves.
As far as your future projection, I offer this as reassurance: when the pain of change becomes less than the pain of staying the same, we change. In the broader picture, as an unsustainable entitlement society crumbles, the survivors will become more resourceful and be forced to educate themselves and equip themselves with whatever tools it takes to make it in the new paradigm. What was cast away as old and useless will be recycled and made new again. Those that take to new ideas while we still live in the good old days will discover it's easier than they ever imagined.
A brief example: Remember how closely guarded trade secrets were when you were a kid? There were apprenticeships for a reason. College was where you would obtain the bulk of higher learning for a future career. Now thanks to advances in technology and commerce, someone who has the discipline to educate themselves can learn to do things for themselves combing the internet and reading the best of the best material related to the subject through Amazon. We are living in the 'Brown's Bottom' of knowledge, and the people that are willing to get out there and get it will form the back bone of a great generation; if they choose to invest now.

"when the pain of change becomes less than the pain of staying the same, we change." Fine observation/nugget of wisdom! Pondering this thought leads me to think we may be a long way off from a revolution. But things can change fast.

Automation and offshoring has greatly reduced the amount of human labor necessary. In addition, the golden age of the 1950's was due in large part to the benefit to the USA of every other industrialized nation being bombed to smithereens in WWII.

In our current situation without paying welfare and having the largest incarcerated population in the western world, our cities would be in flames.

65 respect. but respectfully, speak for urself and ur own children please. this generations list of gifts to humanity (granted on a relatively war free platform provided by our generations fathers) is as great as the printing press or fire even. more respect, but america "produced" some of those 'able' but attracted and kept, many many more of the best humanity had to offer. we still live off those fruits. one problem is we nurture them now but they return home. nevertheless, the world is a far, far better place on virtually any measure. take care to avoid the mistake we are diminishing rather than the world is approaching faster than we are accustomed. a problem for us one might argue (not me, we are best and will remain so for my lifetime) but a net benefit for the world.

"THE problem is that the higher quality intellects, character, and work ethic of that earlier era is inconceivable to the 20 and 30 year olds of today that should be generating the new products and ideas"

"generating new products and ideas" has nothing to do with fixing the realities that we face today.

Technology is a process.

Ideas are, well, ideas.

None of that can be translated into the physical world without physical resources. What Gail and others are trying to demonstrate is that we're incapable of generating growth w/o resources: and if populations continue to increase it's highly doubtful that we could, assuming that our economic system's collapse [it's based on growth] doesn't take us all down with it [wars], even tread water.

Get rid of shadow governments and central bankers. Diversify the grid with cheap, clean thorium energy and free humanity to unbounded limits. The only thing holding us back are the assholes controlling our countries like slave colonies.

Man, but think of how awesome that would be! It would be like the Fourth of July all the time! Of course, it would tend to look a lot like the current shit raining from the skies, shit from drones, and many people would die, but that's necessary in order to keep the rulers operating! (and they give us all those great stories about how we can all be rich if we just work hard like they...)

The absurdity of expecting infinite growth in a finite world is starting to get more and more attention, and that's good. One problem I notice in most of these pieces involves concerns about prices of various things, and how that will affect the future. No doubt, costs will be a factor. However, what kind of factor? What do prices mean when the money we use is abstract, and is actually debt? When markets and therefore prices are nakedly manipulated? At what point does force trump price? Too many people think of economic systems and conditions as if they were laws of nature, like gravity or thermodynamics. It seems pretty clear, for instance, that a finite world cannot support a system based on lending at interest. Very few people seem to think about what that might mean.

You halve the energy use of said transistor to 1 watt by making it smaller, more "advanced," and overall using less materials/resources per transistor; thereby making it more affordable. Now 6 billion people can afford a transistor. Net energy use 6 billion watts, more resources used in manufacture as well.

Technological advancements do not lead to reduced energy/resource use, but rather to increased resource use. The connections between efficiency, economy and real-world consequences seem to have eluded you.

You halve the energy use of said transistor to 1 watt by making it smaller, more "advanced," and overall using less materials/resources per transistor; thereby making it more affordable. Now 6 billion people can afford a transistor. Net energy use 6 billion watts, more resources used in manufacture as well.

Technological advancements do not lead to reduced energy/resource use, but rather to increased resource use. The connections between efficiency, economy and real-world consequences seem to have eluded you.

That's why I tend to use the word "affordable" (affordability). It's based more around a notion of a percentage of one's income/wealth/revenues. In the final analysis it ALWAYS comes down to energy, just like in nature. Spending a lot of energy for little gain will tend to force corrections.

"It seems pretty clear, for instance, that a finite world cannot support a system based on lending at interest."

In its origins "interest" was actually viable, as the "interest" was in the form of actual physical stuff (calves born during transit). It slowly turned into a "promise," and then a "guarantee"- we started demanding that calves be born... (and if they weren't we'd pretend they were)

I read an economic history of Hitler's Germany. What the Germans were motivated by was a fear of lack of resources and that given their lack of many key industrial resources and food, they would lose global economic competition. The Poland, Ukraine and Russia were seen as their promised land. Much like modern Israel, Germany saw the people there as surplus and in the way of Greater Germany. The rest is history. As for Israel, time will tell.

But don't forget.....ever since 1965 give or take we have gone to war or have supported proxies to war for us in order to secure far away resources we have either run out of or can't acquire in a cheap enough fashion to keep the High Tech magic and Debt creation fantasy land we called modern American life afloat.

Realize also....business is warfare as well. The art of the deal is a way to block sovereign entities looking at acquiring that same thing that is needed for the health of the state.....and of course at times the military as well. You can't keep a strong, world wide standing army on magic skittles shitted out by genetically modified unicorns.

The Romans only can WISH....if they were alive today....to have as large of Pax Roma as America has of Pax Americana.

But just like the Romans.....overshoot of natural resources, debt overload and moral and ethical rot will be America's undoing as well.

Firstly, resources don't increase, economic extraction does. A resource is only considered a resource if it can be profitably extracted and utilized (i.e. someone gets fed and provisioned well enough for doing it). BTW, you are talking to a geo who's worked in the resources profession for decades.

Secondly, the exponential function doesn't care about your opinion of it. It doesn't care if you don't get it, agree with it, or like its naughty willful ways.

And it also doesn't seem to matter, or even show-up as a meaningful effect, almost at all, until the last generation, where it radically changes everything, that once seemed so stable and manageable.

For example: when an atom bomb chain-reaction occurs nothing much occurs for scores of generations of exponential neutron breeding. If I remember it correctly (I probably don't) it's up to about generation 57 where almost nothing much at all happens, but then you get to generation 58 ... and by generation 59, that generation becomes severely stunted and the reaction begins to dissipate, because the atoms reacting have all suddenly expanded by several dozen orders of magnitude.

Faster than could possibly be expected, managed, or contained, via any mechanism.

So yeah, for a couple of hundred years, or rather a few tens of thousands of years, nothing much at all occurs with the population growth, it seems steady and more or less entirely manageable. Then with one more exponential generation the jigg is finally up, the very next generation becomes a small fraction of the former one.

And silly people like you and me won't be debating the issue, our 'problems' will have all been solved. :-)

Resources increase linearly. Population grows exponentialy. Thomas Malthus. Who has been wrong for 200+ years so far.

Oh really? Try telling that to the Classical Mayans, or the Easter Islanders, or the Rwandans of the 1990s, or the Haitians of today.

Or what about formerly common resources such as ivory, or sandalwood, or whales, or ginseng --- why have they all become, only in the last century or so, vanishingly rare? And those are/were some of the potentially renewable ones!

Malthus was not categorically right, strictly speaking, at any given moment in any given place, but he was fundamentally not wrong either.

RESOURCES are varied. If we're talking about energy then we can go back before the fossil fuel era and note that all such energy resources DID have the ability to increase exponentialy because they were based on then current/recent life forms. Trees. Whale oil. (and today people still burn cow dung for energy)

POPULATION can be anything measured. Yes, I realize that we're forcing it to mean only "humans," but refer to my preceding paragraph.

Thomas Malthus is dead. His "theory," however, is still valid and is readily proven via simple scientific demonstrations. Of course there's also proven history as to what happens when people overshoot their carrying capacities.

But back to the logic of blasting Malthus, how long is too long to wait for something to be proven (well, it has been proven) or to actually occur in the larger picture? 100 years? 50 years? 25 years? 2 years? People have been waiting for the return of Christ for how many years? We have more people believing that Christ will return than believe in what Malthus said and IS demonstrable.

You're right. Unfortunately, when the time comes, and I firmly believe it will be sooner than later and in my lifetime, the 90+% and yourself and myself will all act in our own rational, self-interest with the sole purpose of self-preservation- I kinda envision it to be like the pictures Hedgeless posts of Haitian interactions, except its every resource deficient country on Earth.

I find this equation so powerful that if I were to ever get a tattoo, this would be it.

There's a good clip on youtube of Albert Bartlett hashing over the ramifications of exponential growth as it pertains to demographics, resource extraction, etc...

It was Bartlett's presentation Arithmetic, Population and Energy that stopped me dead in my tracks. From that point on I KNEW the future.

It's a revelation that people just cannot accept. So... forward we go... But, in fairness, despite our apparent fascination with death machines humans have managed to increase their numbers in excess of 7 billion. After reading Peter Kropotkin's Mutal Aid I'm inclined to believe that we're in this predicament because we're too compassionate (though it's probably more about our "intelligence" in extracting and exploiting resources). There really isn't any guidance for how we can manage population sizes, none of the religious texts that wrap around the planet provide any relief: "go forth and multiply" was never caveated...

It isn't, however, a certainty that it wouldn't be the other way around if circumstances had been different. And if you boil it down to its essence it becomes but an issue of robbing from the poor and defenseless.

This is way off the mark. Earth is not really finite - as it captures a ton of fresh solar energy every day. And only energy might possibly be the bottleneck, not so much matter. You can demolish old buildings, strip the steel, grind concrete - and reuse it - but it takes energy to do it. The same can go for most other resources, while technology is constantly producing substitutes and completely new options. We're standing on a really, really large rock.

The one resource that we really have in short supply is time. We could use extremely resource-conservative techniques for all production - but it would drive living standards into the ground. One persons lifetime of production would amount to a fraction of end products in that case. When for example rare earth minerals starts to run out, than maybe we'll have to do it the hard way - that we'll adapt. Doing it the hard way for "finite world" reasons is just silly. For any human activity there's a timescale. It makes sense to get a lot of attention for forecasting next 10 years, but each decade after that gets less and less attention for very good reasons. Future is unknown and forecasting for very long term is useless. It is also pointless as at some point entire generation will be dead, than 2 generations, than 3 generations and so on. How much effort should a person living today put into well-being of other peoples living ATM and how much into 10 generations down the line? Looking only on the tip of your nose is evil, but looking on eternity is silly. There's got to be some deprecation of future as time goes by.

I can agree that there will be transitional problems when cheap fuels of the kind that we use right now run out. Same thing for socio-economic problems with milking relatively small but very expensive deposits and finding out they're just gone. But IMO global slowdown has only little to do with resources, while a lot to do with growth of global legal theft and general erosion of rule of just law.

global slowdown has only little to do with resources, while a lot to do with growth of global legal theft and general erosion of rule of just law.

That's an excellant comment.

If humans had continued to evolve, and become spiritually enlightned entities, the ideas of self-preservation, generational-preservation or dynastic-preservation might not be a stretch of the imagination.

Or is that just stupid? We are merely facory farmed battery-chickens, fuelling some meaningless headless blunder.

What is it that perpetuates human-beings to want to live and reproduce, knowing we all will die?

Self-fulfilling prophecy that we will corrupt ourselves, and be led off the cliffs of extinction

"We are merely factory farmed battery-chickens, fueling some meaningless headless blunder." One of the best theories/descriptions on the human condition I have seen in a while. With regard to the use of the word "headless", this site has a lot of conspiracy theorists throwing around the name Rothschild too much as if there is a small group pulling secret levers and such. Maybe too many James Bond movies? I have moved more towards the end of the spectrum of this being an orchestrated affair, but I haven't reached the midway point from it being a haphazard, headless situation.

"the financial problem we have has nothing to do with physical world limitations

it is purely socialogical problem"

I disagree.

"A simply has to share/give-away some of her assets with/to B so that B can start to build up his own wealth"

"B" has to access to resources. If there are NO resources then how is "B" going to "build up his own wealth?"

Yes, I'll agree that there's quite the imbalance with regards to allocation of resources, but spreading things out evenly and continuing to increase over-all resource consumption (because we need to consume real, physical things) will only last so long.